Of Rebels And Revolutions
by Chaed
Summary: CF as you never imagined it. Annie enters the arena instead of Mags. Katniss gets captured instead of Peeta. Cashmere and Gloss don't pathetically die at the Cornucopia. A cunning rebel plan that threatens to fail, yet somehow gets its act together.


_I sat down today with the best intentions of making some progress on my long overdue To Where The Mockingjay Flies story and this… happened._

 _It started out as a plot bunny keeping me from the serious stuff, so I agreed to write it down just so I could get it out of my head. So I could get back to the important work you know, like making Peeta suffer more than S. Collins ever dreamed of._

 _But then this little amalgam grew and morphed, and became disturbingly satirical and comically unpredictable. At the same time I could not stop writing out of curiosity of what the hell would happen next._

 _So I present you with the AU-est AU of CF you have ever read. Please enjoy yourselves and don't make the mistake of taking it seriously. If you're into stories that aren't lined with plot holes the size of District Eleven, feel free to check out my other works or simply hightail it out of here and stalk the many gifted authors roaming this fandom._

 _(See the end of the work for more notes.)_

* * *

I come to with a splitting headache. High-level adrenaline takes me right back up into survival mode. The Quell. The tree. The big bang. My head shoots up and the only reason I don't topple over is because my hands are tied tightly behind my back.

The jungle arena has turned into a metal contraption and I realize I'm riding a hovercraft. And I'm not alone. Across from me sit the District One tributes Cashmere and Gloss, Finnick to my right and Johanna Mason to my left. They're all restrained and sporting varying grades of injuries. I don't see Peeta and I'm not sure whether to be happy or alarmed about that.

"What's going on?" My voice is raspy, echoing painfully in my skull.

"Not now, Katniss." Finnick doesn't even look at me, staring straight ahead. Cashmere and Gloss observe me with reservation, but are otherwise silent. They're probably as much out of the loop as I am. And Johanna, the perpetrator of my migraine and turn-coat to our alliance, is currently breathing through some kind of oxygen mask, which seems to take up most of her energy. Blood pools from a torso wound that hasn't been there when she back-stabbed me.

I try to wriggle free of my restraints. The plasticuffs dig welts into my skin. I'm tied to something behind me, which makes it impossible to stand up.

"Where are we going?" I want to know. "What happened? Where's Peeta?"

"Not. Now." Finnick hisses.

Well, I can piece together my own story, no problem. Beetee was successful in jerry-rigging the lightning tree. I shot the forcefield. I thereby not only effectively put an end to the Quarter Quell but also blasted the damn arena to pieces. What happened next is a guess, because the shockwave knocked me out cold. I presume the survivors were picked up by Games Security and we're now being flown back to the Capitol to face the consequences of this grande-mal fuck up. Peeta, Beetee and Annie are absent, which leaves two options: they're either being ferried in by a second hovercraft or they didn't survive the blast.

I want to launch into a third wave of questions, but Finnick throttles me with a menacing glare. Not now. I get it. I also get that he knows more than the rest of us, which makes me question our surprising alliance in the first place. How could I have been so naive and agree to splitting up from Peeta!

I turn to Johanna, wondering if she's been a conspirator in Finnick's scheme, but I get the same input from her: the iron curtain. Hush-hush.

The hovercraft rocks, landing, and I brace myself for what's to come. We must have reached the Capitol. Once the ramp descends it'll be Peacekeepers en masse.

But the hovercraft's belly remains closed. Minutes of nerve-wracking silence later I hear footsteps and then a very ill-tempered guard enters the cargo room. The butt of his rifle goes straight for Finnick's face, who yelps in both pain and surprise.

"You better talk while you still have a tongue, Odair!" the guard barks.

Finnick spits blood and mucus, trying to blink the stars from his vision.

"What the hell went on back there?!" He puts a hand around Finnick's throat, squeezing. "President Snow will have your head for-"

"Hey!" I can't control the words leaving my mouth, but the moment they do I know it was a mistake. The man lets go of Finnick and hovers dangerously over me.

"Yes, Ms Everdeen? Something worthwhile to add?"

"Leave her alone!" interjects Finnick before I do something even more stupid, like getting myself killed. "She doesn't know anything."

Which is true, although I doubt the guy believes it, or even cares.

"I'm cleared to avox all of you if that'll get me answers," we're threatened. "So talk."

Johanna says something from my left, but it's muffled by her mask. It's certainly no compliment to our interrogator, but effectively gets his attention, which I'm not sure was her intention.

Her mask is slipped off. Her breath comes in labored wheezes and I still don't catch what she's whispering next. Neither does the guard. He grabs her by the hair, yanks back and leans his own head closer to hers.

"Louder, please."

Johanna takes a deep breath and rasps "I said go to hell!" which is bad enough in itself, but she follows it up by snagging the guy's feet from underneath him and slamming her head against his. Long story short he ends up on the ground, ridiculed and Johanna cackles triumphantly. I'm not sure what this victory will get her apart from a lot of pain, but she seems very satisfied with herself despite struggling to find a sustainable breathing pattern.

The guard, lobster-red, gets to his feet, stares us all into the ground and storms out of the cargo bay.

Once he's gone and not coming back to shoot us dead on the spot, Finnick leans forward tentatively, looking over me at Johanna.

"You alright?"

Johanna slumps back against the wall, enriched with the experience of putting the guy in his place but now bereft of her air mask.

She closes her eyes and coughs.

"Fuck, no."

* * *

After that it's back to waiting. Cashmere and Gloss haven't said a word since I woke up and both Finnick and Johanna refuse to indulge me on the severity of our situation.

I don't think we're in the Capitol yet after all. We've landed somewhere and are waiting for something. The other hovercraft? Snow deciding on what to do with us? The guards waiting for either Finnick or Johanna turning supportive? The uncertainty is killing me, especially since it involves not knowing what's going on with Peeta.

I watch Gloss leaning over and whispering something in Cashmere's ear. She considers, then tilts her head sideways so it looks like her brother is giving her a kiss on the head. Only that he draws back with something clamped between his teeth and, I'll be damned, they smuggled a freaking jack-knife into the Games. In Cashmere's coiffure. That's what I call a district token!

Finnick, having seen it too, tenses up beside me. Gloss drops the blade into his sister's hands, who now works on freeing herself. We all wait entranced until they're done and Cashmere has her first say since the start of our captivity.

"Finnick. On a scale from One to Ten; how bad?"

"Eleven."

Apparently that's bad enough. The twins get up and disappear through the door the guard came from.

"What the hell is going on?" I whisper.

"Not now, Katniss."

"Right now. Where's Peeta?" I sound like a broken record.

"I don't know," Finnick snaps. "And he's not a priority, ok? We need to get out of here first."

"What happened in the arena?"

"Shut the fuck up or we'll all be dead," hisses Johanna. "Good lord."

I bite down on my tongue. Cashmere returns, bloody hands and a dripping knife. The guard problem seems to have solved itself.

"Where to?"

Finnick arches his eyebrows. "Gloss can fly?"

"No. But he can hold a gun to the pilot's head. So?"

Finnick hesitates.

"Just tell her already," pleads Johanna.

"Thirteen."

"What?" Cashmere and I echo in unison.

"Thirteen, goddamnit. District Thirteen."

"Bad time for a joke, Finnick."

"I'm not. It's Thirteen or the Capitol, alright?"

Cashmere runs bloody fingers through her hair, as shaken as I. District Thirteen? Hasn't that been eradicated during the Dark Days? And what do Finnick and Johanna have to do with it?

"Shit," Cashmere summarizes to the point. She hands Finnick the knife. "Get yourselves fixed up. I'll go tell Gloss."

Once free I massage the feeling back into my wrists. Finnick conjures a medkit.

"Give me your arm," he demands.

"I did that already," says Johanna, reattaching the mask to her face. I look down at the fleshy mess that used to be my forearm. "Your tracker," Johanna clarifies. "I cut it out."

Only now do I realize that Finnick and Johanna have the same wounds, probably self-inflicted.

"We were supposed to get picked up by Thirteen," Finnick explains while wrapping gauze around my now trackerless arm. "That somehow backfired."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"We couldn't. Snow had you monitored. It was too risky."

"You all knew?"

"One, Two and Nine didn't. Can you hold this, please?" I tack down on the dressing so Finnick can knot up a bandage around the cut on his leg. "Listen, the less you know the better. In case we do end up with Snow. Once we reach Thirteen you can ask Haymitch."

"Haymitch was in on this?" I can't believe he front out lied to me the whole time! "Did Peeta know?"

"No. He would have told you. We couldn't take the risk. Do you have any other injuries?"

Apart from a respectable bump on the back of my head and the concussion to go with it, no. "I'm fine," I say.

Finnick nods and moves over to Johanna, who's practicing first aid on herself. He gingerly pulls at the fabric surrounding her wound. "Who got you?"

"Brute. After I lured Two away from her." She looks at me like I'm responsible for the gaping hole in her side.

"Got you pretty good," Finnick declares and forages the med kit. "Lung?"

"I don't know. I'm out of breath. Perhaps. Shit."

"You'll be fine. Katniss. Can you help?"

I hold some stacked gauze over Johanna's wound while Finnick wraps a tight dressing around her chest. It starts to soak red pretty quickly, which I don't interpret as a good sign.

"Finnick," the intercom rings.

"Stay with her," Finnick instructs me and heads out through the only door.

I'm left dumbfounded, massively overwhelmed by this new turn of events. Have we just hijacked a Capitol hovercraft to fly the coop to an un-destroyed district that had, for whatever reason, planned to barge in on the All-Stars Quarter Quell, and then hadn't?

"Hey," Johanna says. "Cut the daydreaming, Twelve. Pass me that box, would you?"

She crams through the med kit and comes up with a syringe and some ampules, draws up a little from each, then taps out the air. "You ever ride the white horse, Katniss?"

"What?"

Johanna rolls her eyes, as if dealing with a dense child. She holds up the syringe. "Can you find a vein? My hands are shaking. I feel like shit, ok? Please. Wrap this around my arm. Like that, yeah. Stick the needle in, there. Now the plunger. Good girl." She leans back, closes her eyes against the pain. "First try, first hit. What a natural."

I'm… I don't even know what I am. Appalled? This went far too smooth for a once-in-a-lifetime intervention.

Here's me, stating the obvious. "That wasn't your first time."

Johanna snorts. "Good thing you don't get to grow up around victors, Kitty Kat. Now go see what Finnick's doing. He better not fuck this up again."

* * *

Cashmere and Gloss did a good job at cleaning out the hovercraft. I spy the guard from earlier in a corner, slit throat all-inclusive. The only survivor, in fact, is the poor pilot currently harassed by three victors.

"I told you to stay with Johanna." Finnick chides.

"She's fine," I say. "She took some painkillers. Where are we?"

"In the middle of nowhere," says Gloss. "Not so far from the arena actually. But we're heading into the right direction. Right?"

The last bit is meant for the pilot, who gulps and nods his head. It's what I would do if somebody had a gun pressed to my ear. Play nice.

"They'll send out a search patrol," says Cashmere. "Probably catch up with us before we're halfway there."

"I know," says Finnick. "We're flying under the radar, yes?"

The pilot nods again.

Finnick activates a holo-map of Panem. "If we get here, we can walk the rest of the way. To the pick-up point. The faster we loose the hovercraft, the better."

"There's a pick-up point?" I ask.

"There was a back-up plan. In case we got separated. Or, well. This. How long till we get there?"

The pilot enters the coordinates. "ETA 16 minutes."

"Will the patrols have picked us up by then?"

"Probably not."

Finnick's drop-off looks like mountains and forests on the map. Good for hiding. But uneven terrain means slow progress to Thirteen's rendezvous. And apparently we have no way to contact them. Finnick hopes they're tracking the altered hovercraft route and can put two and two together. Then it's a matter of who finds us first; our ominous new allies or an army of Peacekeepers.

Cashmere crosses her arms. I notice the cut on her and her brother's forearms. Looks like we're all tracker-free now. "You want to take a stroll through the woods with Mason leaking her guts across half the cargo bay?"

"She won her Games under worse conditions," says Finnick. "I'm not leaving Johanna behind."

"She won't make it. Realistically. And she'll slow us down. You know that."

"That's not negotiable, Cash. She's part of the alliance. She'll pull through."

Cashmere shrugs. "Dead weight, but by all means, you carry it." Then she sighs and shakes her head. "What shit you've pulled us into, Finn."

* * *

So the hovercraft landed, Gloss killed the pilot and we're now stocking up on provisions and guns. Cashmere puts a rifle in my hands and is disappointed when I don't know which way around to hold it. What we do with our lives in Twelve? Well, nothing with guns, really. Thankfully even a complete retard can find the trigger. I try not to be offended.

We each load up with a pack, apart from Johanna, who's only supposed to carry herself. She's in pretty good spirits considering her condition and the amount of blood she lost during the ride. We packed out the med kit, so we can all dose up around the campfire later. I can't even believe I'm saying this.

With our trackers gone and potential bugs left behind Finnick can finally tell us what five rogue victors are doing out in the back country.

Plutarch Heavensbee was not only Head Gamemaker, but also a Thirteen spy. District Thirteen, by the way, has been blooming underground for the last 75 years. They've been insistently plotting revenge, but waited for the right moment to have their coming-out. Which brings me into the story. The nightlock berries gave Panem a big shake and a woman named Alma Coin, Thirteen's leader, thought that I was the perfect figurehead to incite the next civil war. So Plutarch convinced Snow to have a Victors-Only Quarter Quell, because they needed experienced murderers to babysit me until extraction. The unified consent was that I'd screw up my part if pitted against another 22 tributes wanting mine and Peeta's heads. At this point Cashmere gets galled, because why weren't she and Gloss approached about the deal. I don't know. Because One and Two sided with the Capitol from time immemorial?

Anyway, the plan was set, everyone happy and then Mags had that stroke during training, so Annie Cresta had to move up as tribute. What I hadn't known then but do now is that Annie is Finnick's secret love and had the people in command psyched out because Finnick's allegiance now depended on Annie's survival. And nobody really knew whether I'd decide to stick an arrow in her back first thing at the cornucopia, as unpredictable as I was. That of course put Johanna on edge, the only other real fighter in the rebel plot, who could only be swayed into participating because of her friendship with Finnick. She was now reconsidering her support lest she be caught in the middle of the mayhem when Finnick jumped ship in an Annie-slash-cannon scenario.

On the other hand you had Cashmere and Gloss who had bargained out an alliance with Finnick and Johanna, which Finnick and Johanna had agreed to prior to talking with Plutarch, but weren't sure what to do about after Mags rearranged the cards. Since they were all good fighters and Finnick possibly the best sponsored tribute in history the initial plan entailed refraining from getting at each others' throats long enough to kill Brutus, Enobaria and yours-truly (I admit I'm a little honored to be put on par with Two in terms of threat-level). In that case the unusual alliance of One-Four-Seven would be a welcome game changer.

That, of course, was before Plutarch, before Mags and Annie, and before I declared that I wasn't interested in any alliances whatsoever. In the end everyone mounted their launch pads without knowing who would be friend or foe when the countdown dropped to zero. I was the wild card.

But I didn't kill Annie at the cornucopia and teamed up with Finnick and Wiress instead. That had Johanna hightail it out into the jungle with Annie and Beetee and left an utterly pissed District One defecting to their substitute pact with Two, thus forming the traditional career pack, very much to the enjoyment of the audience who were expecting a blockbuster of guts and gore from this unique participant makeup.

Some acid fog and killer monkeys later Twelve, Seven, Four and Three united, splitting the tribute pool into two camps. Wiress died for Beetee's magic wire, but Finnick and Johanna managed to take out Enobaria in return.

We then cooked up the lightning tree idea, which was not Beetee's spur of the moment ingenuity like I initially thought, but a core element of the whole rebel undertaking. I was coaxed into splitting up from Peeta to carry the wire to the beach with Johanna.

One and Two had seen through our plan by then and were preparing for a major retaliation. So far so good. Now it gets complicated. The twins attacked the tree crew and splintered our group into smaller factions. Annie and Peeta escaped into the jungle, Beetee not so much, and Finnick took off after Johanna and I because he was of the impression that we couldn't possibly take on three careers at once.

The two of us, oblivious to the ensuing chaos, were well on our way to the beach when Brutus appeared out of nowhere and Johanna decided that before Brutus could put a spear through my heart she would knock me unconscious, leave me 'for dead' and lure him and the soon to be arriving siblings away. Which she did masterfully, rolling me into a ditch so out of sight that Finnick ran right past me when he came to our aid. He intercepted Cashmere and Gloss a second time, but had to hightail it out before he could find Johanna, who was playing catch-me-if-you-can with Brutus in the adjoining wedge.

Meanwhile, convinced I had been double-crossed I backtracked to the lightning tree to regroup with Peeta and shoot anyone who dared to stand in our way. I ended up shooting the force field, thinking it would fry all remaining tributes, but instead blew up the entire arena. Oops.

That's when I blacked out. The action continued for a while without me though. We don't know if the rebels came at all, but Games Security was quick to pick up whoever wasn't dead by then. They got me (duh), overwhelmed Finnick with tasers and rounded up Cashmere and Gloss, who must have been experiencing the ultimate WTF moment. Johanna and Brutus, the only ones to practice true sportsmanship, battled it out long after the stroke of the gong. Johanna, at this point clearly inferior and getting broken-down, managed to climb a tree and sit it out long enough for the guards to seize Brutus before he could cleave his way through the trunk. Brutus, being from Two and an all-or-nothing player had to be gunned down to surrender. It took six casualties before he went out. All that was then left to do was find a way to get Johanna Mason out of her tree. I would have liked to see that happen with Johanna at peak performance, but after leaving a blood-trail across half the jungle she didn't put up much of a fight.

Fast forward to the present moment.

"Wow," I say, the only word that comes to mind. Who wouldn't be speechless at this point? I bet there has never been a worse-planned rebellion in the history of mankind. We still don't know what became of Peeta and Annie, Snow has a lot of problem solving to do and Thirteen is short one Mockingjay. Presupposed that I consent to playing that part, which I'm really not sure is the destiny I see for myself. I'm also a little upset that nobody cared to ask me if being the beacon of hope for a suppressed nation somehow aligned with my career goals. Because, not in the slightest. I really hope I get to meet this President Coin. My sincere advice to her would be to hire new strategists before she sets out to save the not-so free world.

We make good progress during the remaining daylight hours and hole up in a cave for the night. I slip into a memory of the 74th and my time with Peeta in a similar environment, only to realize that absolutely no aspect of the current situation compares to that moment. I sit around a minimalist fire trying not to freeze my ass off in my out-of-place jungle wetsuit while Finnick and Gloss crack jokes about some poor Capitol news reporter Cressi-something. I think between the five of us we've killed a few dozen people. My train of thoughts jumps rails, it's unbelievable.

"Fuck, I'm winded," says Johanna and falls asleep for the first time since the Games started. The bleeding has stopped, but her ability to properly breathe has gone downhill. Cashmere suggests that if there's no improvement by tomorrow morning we try to drain the blood that has accumulated in Johanna's thoracic cavity, which translates to stabbing her in the chest and seeing if she gets more air out of it or none at all. I'm glad Johanna is semi unconscious, because I doubt she would approve of this aggressive therapeutic plan.

We call it a night soon after. We're all quite tired and look forward to not having to kill each other the coming day. To avoid repeated capture by the Capitol we split up the night-shift. Nothing happens and apart from being miserably cold I actually manage to get a few hours of rest.

The next day we're faced with the anticipated problem of Johanna's worsening state. Her lips are tinted blue and she really struggles to let Cashmere know what she thinks about her options. ("Over my rotting corpse, you demented wench!")

Finnick elegantly averts a bitch fight by proposing we wait out the rest of the day and if we're not rescued by the following morning we can still continue the benefits discussion of thoracoscoming Johanna against her will. Everybody can live with that.

We continue our journey to the promised extraction point and the day passes rather uneventfully. By now used to new terrors in hourly fashion I am almost disappointed at the lack of obstacles in our way. Two hours or so before sundown Finnick announces that this is it, a nondescript clearing in the woods, our stage goal. Either the rebels changed their minds on the need of a Mockingjay or they have terrible timing, but night comes, we're still unrescued and Johanna becomes increasingly edgy about the unavoidable second review of her case.

Finnick brews up a dose of morphling that would make Six envious. It's enough to tranquilize a bear and wondrously doesn't kill Johanna instantly.

* * *

Our knight in shining armor is a hovercraft of the outdated generation, spawning a crew of grey jumpsuits and an overjoyed, albeit exhausted Plutarch Heavensbee.

The first thing I do after launching into my where's-Peeta tirade is punching Plutarch straight in the face for fucking so carelessly with mine and everyone else's lives. That earns me a seat wedged between two guards and a mentally-disabled bracelet upon our arrival in Thirteen.

Johanna is carted off to medical where she can get professional help by people who actually know what they're doing.

We rejoin with Peeta and Annie, who were the only ones successfully extracted from the arena.

Then I am introduced to President Coin, a woman in her mid fifties, who made it the goal of her sunset years to bring freedom to enslaved Panem.

The question everyone has been waiting for is asked.

Will I be the Mockingjay?

* * *

 _I know. It's bizarre. And parts of it, like Annie in the arena, would actually make good plot points for a serious story. I'm just unsure if I'll ever get around to writing it. This is a one-shot in case anyone wonders. What the hell was that District One cameo about? I have no idea._

 _I'm just glad this is out of my head. Hopefully it was entertaining enough for some of you. Let me know what you think, even if only about the basic plot idea if not for the writing. Would you be interested in reading such a version of CF someday? Like, Annie taking Mags' place and things going bogus from there?_


End file.
